The wind was solemn when Laureen and her team emerged from the undergrowth to meet Milton. He wasn't alone, though. Idling in the clearing were at least a dozen men with rifles propped on their hands, ready to shoot should something leap from the forest. Stell sidled next to her at the sight of the camo blending with the fronds. In the distance, an M1803 stared off into the shore, guarding each slap of the ocean against the sand in case the water tried to attack.

Laureen swiped the sweat off her forehead. The rest of the soldiers were clad neck to toe in all kinds of garments that wouldn't fly in the tropics. No wonder Milton was grumpy. He must be burning underneath all those customary layers. And for what? A few minutes of intimidation to feed his ego?

On her arms, Amy squirmed. It's another ordeal to get her ready to face the Lieutenant. It's like the child had an inkling on how her day would go, considering she had already torn through her netting and tried to clamber down the porch. Thankfully, Quid was there to man the screen door until Jas snatched her up and took her to the bathroom.

From there, Laureen got shampoo sods up to her shoulders in trying to get the grime and bits of melties off Amy's hair. With a little bit of product in her hair, the dark strands turned silky enough to remind Laureen of licorice. Amy would grow up to be a beautiful girl.

What Quid told Laureen a couple of days ago itched at the back of her mind. She had to shake the thoughts off as she and her team crept closer to where Milton stood, talking to two more soldiers who could have been bland copies of him.

The soldier to Milton's left—Ratiff, read his name tag—noticed Laureen's approach and jerked his chin in her direction. "They're here, sir."

Milton turned, and his arrogant smirk greeted Laureen again. Amy's large doe eyes blinked in curiosity as she took in what looked to be a behemoth man in front of her. "Hey, Doctor," the Lieutenant greeted. "Where's the package?"

Laureen rocked Amy. "This is the package," she said. "We found her in the catacombs, miraculously alive despite everything around her decomposing. Take her to the University. Perhaps, they will have more equipment to conduct various tests."

"I don't know if you noticed it, Doctor," Milton waved his hands in front of him as if Amy was a soggy pasta dish he wasn't fond of trying. "That's a child."

"I am aware, Lieutenant," she answered before nodding to Jas who began fumbling for the blood samples fresh out of the cabin fridge. "Now, these are the samples we procured. I don't know if it'd be of help, but we can at least try, and—"

"I'm not taking some child anywhere," Milton interjected. He braced his hips. "How can I be sure you didn't abduct this from the savage camp and built up a lie? Are you really that desperate for bucks?"

Quid shouldered past Laureen before she could answer and got into the Lieutenant's face. Next to the ripped dude, the linguist looked like a used plastic bag. "Look here, sir. I don't care if you're a hotshot in the military, but if you plan to disrespect the Doctor in the island she helped study from the ground up, I don't see the point of talking to you further," he said. "We are bringing you an enigma—something that can be groundbreaking if science could provide an explanation for it. This child is living proof of civilization on this island, and you dare call the Doctor a liar—"

Laureen laid a hand on Quid's arm, attempting to pull him back before the other soldiers decided he's a target to shoot at, but he wasn't done. "Yes, we are in danger of losing our funding for next year, but we're not some filthy blabbermouths who take advantage!" he said. "If you don't believe us, we'll find other ways to get Amy across the ocean. If she proved to be something extraordinary, we will tell everyone how you have been a doucheb—"

That's when Laureen shoved him aside, sending him crashing to where Jas and Stell idled. "While I appreciate my colleague's defense, please pay him no mind," she ducked her head in apology, even though Milton was the one being impossible in this situation. They wouldn't get anywhere if they screamed at each other. "What we're trying to say is that we found this child in the middle of a ruin where she shouldn't have survived for thousands of years, yet she did. She's alive. Don't you find that irregular?"

Milton scratched his head. "It's the fact that this is highly irregular that I don't want to take the kid," he said. "I don't even know the name."

"Amy," Laureen fixed her hold on the child. "Her name is Amy."

"Let's have it this way," Laureen continued through the beats of silence passing between them. "If you prove we've been lying about the child's origins, you can recommend to the University to defund and disband us. If what we're saying is true, then we're willing to let this go. How about that? You've got nothing to lose."

She could see the gears turning in Milton's head. Finally, he bobbed his head. "Deal," he said. Laureen gave him Amy who struggled to remain in her arms to no avail. When he had secured Amy in his arms, he regarded Laureen again. "We'll depart in five."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Laureen said, backing away from the soldiers and rejoining her team by the shade of the fronds. Quid muttered under his breath, bracing his back with both hands as if the hike to the east side despite their bikes hurt him. Stell and Jas both blinked rapidly. Maybe the sand got into their eyes. Or something.

Together, they watched the Lieutenant stride towards the M1803, yelling orders here and there. Amy's small, dark head vanished behind Milton's broad shoulders, and she squirmed in his arms when her gaze landed on Laureen's team. She'd be suited more to the place they'd bring her. She'd only wreck the cabin and slow down Laureen's work if they continued to harbor her.

She repeated those thoughts in her head as the truck peeled from the shore and drove away until it's nothing but a speck in the horizon. After cresting a small hill, it vanished from her vantage point. Oh, well. That's that.

The ride back to camp was muted, and only the noises characteristic of their slough back to the cabin could be heard. Stell and Jas, their two youngest members, would usually be bickering at the back of their bike, but a solemn silence gripped them in their respective seats. Since Quid drove them down, Laureen volunteered for the ride back.

As she parked the bike to the back of the cabin, the others peeled away and entered the cabin without another word. It's strange. They wanted Amy gone with their whining and grumpiness. Shouldn't they be rejoicing like crazy now? Perhaps, Laureen should bust out the fermented wine the elders gifted Quid. That should brighten the mood.

She strode after them to find all the nooks occupied. Jas had busied herself with analyzing the fabric of Amy's clothes, and Stell picked up the wrappers of the remaining choco melties by the torn netting. Quid grunted as he moved the desks to their rightful place before trudging to his laptop where the large picture of the mural waited for him.

"Come on, guys," Laureen clapped her hands and they whirled to her with the energy of a sloth. "How about a drink, hmm?"

Stell and Jas went back to their preoccupations. Quid mussed his hair and leaned back against his creaky monoblock chair. He said nothings, barely flashing Laureen a quick look of disbelief. What's going on? They weren't like this before. The prospect of sneaking a cup or two of liquor during duty used to excite the living lights out of these people, especially Stell. Now, they acted as if Laureen said they'd start shoveling bat poop tomorrow.

Well, she'd get the wine for herself. More for her.

But before that, a bath.

When she stepped out of the shower, everything was good. Her hair had never smelled so good in eras, and the tightness in her shoulders eased when she stayed in the bath for as long as she dared. She hung her damp towel in the makeshift rack they made by the porch and pilfered around the pantry for something to eat and drink. She settled with the last wrap of microwavable sandwich and, as promised, the whole bottle of gifted wine.

She couldn't stomach the gloomy atmosphere inside the cabin, so she escaped to the porch. Night had fallen upon them, with one way to the eastern side taking more than four hours on bike. The wind had turned crisp, and the various howls, clicks, and scratches of critters and insects accompanied her as she sank her teeth into the sandwich and washed it down with the wine.

"I'm the only one who can say this without being fired," Quid said behind her after letting the screen door hiss shut behind him. "But you've got some nerve to be drinking like that after what happened."

Laureen turned to her colleague. "Am I wrong in assuming we deserve this peace and quiet?" she said. "We came here to do our jobs."

"Part of the job is making sure our relic is in safe hands," he reasoned. Papers shifted behind him as he walked to join her on the porch. This was familiar, wasn't it? "You just gave her away to a soldier."

"For safekeeping," she answered. Why was she even trying to defend her decision to a colleague? "The University can help Amy more than we can here. Which reminds me—we have to do groceries soon, and they have limited supplies for children there."

Quid ran out of juice mid-argument, so he just blew a breath and scratched the back of his neck. It's Laureen's point. Again. He gave the papers to her. "I'm done transcribing the mural," he said. "The things there are quite...interesting."

Laureen flipped through the pages, skimming the first one. "Summary?" she prodded.

"It's talking about a rogue spirit that graces their midst every century or so. The ancient Cangabayins believe this spirit will protect them from a coming threat," Quid ran a hand down his face and scratched at his beard. "Those who carved this text provided an analysis on the prophecies handed down from their elders and their elders. They claimed that the records didn't bother saying the spirit's method of saving them was harnessing the forces of nature and destroying everything."

Laureen chewed on her lip in thought. She was no stranger to doomsday stories. Almost every civilization had one. "And?" she cocked an eyebrow in Quid's direction. "Does the mural tell us how to stop said rogue spirit?"

"The text divulges something strange, instead. Look here," Quid urged her to flip to the third page and tapped a finger on a specific line. "It talks about how the narrator was part of this sacred ritual where they found the rogue spirit and, instead of following the prophecy, they decided to seal it away."

"Through pabangtiin, you mean," she said.

Quid shrugged. "Could be," he turned back to the papers. "The words used here are just to describe the actual ritual. Some lines were eroded, but I was able to make out 'coffin'."

The word sparked a trail in Laureen's mind. "Coffin?" she echoed. Then, she tapped her chin. "I found Amy in a coffin. Do you think...?"

The linguist's eyes widened. "Don't tell me—"

It sank into both of them. Amy was the rogue spirit. And if the murals were true, she was someone who could control forces that shouldn't be controlled. For a child, this was dangerous. But for her to have survived up to this age...

"What happened to the civilization who sealed her?" Laureen said aloud.

Quid stared ahead into the darkness, towards the direction of the caverns they kept exploring. "We can only guess," he said. "Without the spirit's powers, they have descended to ruin either way. If the timeline agrees, maybe it's from an epidemic brought upon by Western sailors? You know—the common thread."

Possibly. Cangabayi wasn't left alone during the golden age of colonization either. The locals only survived until now by moving deeper into the mountains until the rest of the world moved apart from the cursed ideology.

"Maybe it was an exaggeration?" Laureen mused. "Ancient civilizations tend to do that."

Quid flipped to the last page with more sections of the mural. Bright orange and lit by the mega-torch on their second visit to take these pictures, the etched lines betrayed a tale Laureen had no patience nor knowledge to comprehend. "They used this word over and over throughout the narrative," he said. "I couldn't find any direct translations, but I cross-referenced it with the locals' language and found this."

He met her gaze, his expression grim. "They call the rogue spirit 'the end of the world'," he said. "Or in a more literal sense...a blight. The apocalypse."

That's...

"Anything else?" Laureen said despite how Quid dampened her mood. The wine didn't taste as good now. They had a literal bomb in their midst all this time, and none of them suspected it? What else was she bound to find out too late?

The linguist upended the sheets back to their original order. "This word caught my eye," he said. "Read it aloud."

Laureen squinted at the highlighted word. It's hard seeing through the single LED bulb in the porch, especially with the abundance of flying termites crowding on the surface. It's going to rain soon. "It's...a-mee?" she said.

"Ami," Quid corrected. "Does it sound familiar?"

It was. It's the same word Amy kept saying—the one which led them to name her that. Turns out, it wasn't her name. "What does it mean?" Laureen forced herself to ask.

A dark cloud passed across Quid's face. "That's what the locals call their parents," he said. "Specifically, their mother."

Laureen paused with the cardboard cup inches from her lips. Mother. Ami meant mother. And if the child called her that...

A curse flew out of Laureen's mouth. She'd been a fool. Too much of a fool. Quid didn't leave her side as she curled into herself and started sobbing.